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When Luther afterwards heard that a rumour had got abroad as to his place of residence, he sent a letter to Spalatin, in which he said: 'A report, so I hear, is spread that Luther is staying at the Wartburg near Eisenach; the people suppose this to be the case, because I was taken prisoner in the wood below; but while they believe that, I sit here safely hidden.
But the importunities of those who had seen it, particularly of Spalatin, prevailed, and on December 18th Luther writes to the latter that "the Tessaradecas, in both Latin and German, is in the hands of the printer." On February 8th, 1520, he sends Spalatin a printed copy of the Latin, and six days later, one of the German edition.
With reference to the attack he had made on the 'episcopal masqueraders' in the tract above mentioned, Luther remarked in a letter to Spalatin on July 26 that he had purposely been so sharp in it, because he saw how vainly he had humbled himself, yielded, prayed and complained. And he added that he would just as little flatter, the King of England.
Libels of this kind were perpetually repeated by the Romanists, and no doubt Hadrian believed them, though Luther did not trouble himself much about such personal attacks, but in his letters to Spalatin, simply called the Pope an ass.
The bull of excommunication he met in the manner intimated to Spalatin from the first. He launched a short tract against it, 'On the new Bull and Falsehoods of Eck, treating it as Eck's forgery. This he followed up with another tract in German and Latin, 'Against the Bull of Antichrist. He was resolved to unmask the blindness and wickedness of the Roman evil-doers.
We have noted a few of the more glaring relics of mediævalism in the footnotes; the attentive reader will discover and dispose of others for himself. The title furnishes peculiar difficulties to the translator. Cole has simply transliterated it, "The Consolatory Terradecad." Spalatin paraphrased it "Ein trostlichs Buchlein," etc. The Berlin Edition renders it, "Vierzehn Trostmittel," etc.
As previously he had said that Antichrist ruled at the Papal court, so now, in a letter of March 13, 1519, he wrote privately to Spalatin, 'I know not whether the Pope is Antichrist himself, or one of his Apostles, so antichristian seemed to him the institution of the Papacy itself, with its principles and its fruits.
He writes thus to Spalatin: 'I have caught them even in open lying; when they tried to evade me with miserable smooth words, I at last bade them prove their teaching by miracles, of which they boasted against the Scriptures. This they refused, but threatened that I should have to believe them some day. Thereupon I told them that their God could work no miracle against the will of my God.
He hastened to send off this letter, and wrote more again on the same subject the next day, June 30, to Jonas, who had informed him of Melancthon's afflictions and of the fierce hatred of their Catholic opponents; also to Spalatin, Agricola, and Brenz, and to the young Duke John Frederick.
When the Humanist John Reuchlin, then the first Hebrew scholar in Germany, was declared a heretic by zealous theologians and monks, on account of the protests he raised against the burning of the Rabbinical books of the Jews, and a fierce quarrel broke out in consequence, Luther, on being asked by Spalatin for his opinion, declared himself strongly for the Humanists against those who, being gnats themselves, tried to swallow camels.
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